Delete Your Account, Internet Archive – No One is Burning Digital Books — Writing at the Centre for Free Expression, John Degen takes aim at a recent op-ed by Internet Archive’s Chris Freeland: “Because a demand for someone else’s property is an unjustifiably selfish act, the champions of ‘gimme’ like to disguise their motivations by styling themselves as freedom fighters. Their rhetoric is silly and disingenuous, self-aggrandizing and laughable. Occasionally though, it wanders into the realm of the truly bizarre and dangerous.”
Two Years After Allen, SCOTUS Poised to Revisit Copyright Infringement by State Entities — At IPWatchdog, Steve Brachmann looks at recent developments regarding copyright and sovereign immunity. The primary focus is on the cert petition in Jim Olive Photography, which the Supreme Court is set to consider March 18. The plaintiff there is asking the Court “to grant the petition, vacate the Texas Supreme Court’s decision and remand the case for further consideration under Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid (2021).”
Kenya is changing its copyright law. Why this is bad for sports — “Piracy has many effects. Firstly, the local licence holder will lose revenue, and therefore motivation to buy a licence next time. If this happens in many countries, the international sports organiser will lose out eventually. In turn, national sports bodies will not get any money from international bodies. In the long run, sports development can be hampered.”
IBPA Position Statement on Maryland eBook Law and Its Impact on Small Publishers and Authors — IBPA, the Independent Book Publishers Association, released a position statement this week supporting the preliminary injunction against Maryland’s recently enacted law mandating ebook licensing to libraries. Says IBPA, “The importance of the issues raised by the Maryland eBook Law cannot be overemphasized. If not successfully challenged in the courts, this law, and laws like it, will directly affect the primarily small and mid-sized publishers in IBPA membership.”
Pro-Codes bill filed to preserve safety code copyright — “NFPA alone develops more than 300 safety standards through an open, consensus-based process, and that’s just our organization. If SDOs were no longer able to carry out our work, there would be a disjointed and expensive patchwork of safety standards in the U.S. and around the world. Standards would probably be updated less frequently, if they were created at all. It’s no exaggeration to say that lives and property would be lost.”